Chumrau: Tariffs Would Have A Direct Impact On NW Growers

When talking about the proposed 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, much of the focus as been on the impact they will have when American producers want to export product.  But Casey Chumrau, CEO of the Washington Grain Commission said the impact would have been much larger than that.  She said she can’t speculate what those tariffs against Canada and Mexico would have done to local grain growers but she is confident they would have squeezed already tight margins.

"Especially from Canada, we get a lot of our fertilizer from both Alberta and Saskatchewan, about 90% of all the Western United States fertilizer comes from Canada. And so of course, any increase in the price coming from Canada will trickle down to those farmers and increase their input costs.”

Chumrau added fertilizer is something that needs to be applied at specific times of the year, and if that window is missed, the crop can be limited, even if trade returns to normal in the coming months.  She added some companies in Canada held fertilizer shipments because of questions surrounding those tariffs  Chumrau said many people don’t appreciate what a tariff against Mexico could do to the grain industry.

“They are our number one export market for all of U.S wheat. It's not a huge market for Washington necessarily, but again, any disruption in those exports or demand trickles down and it affects our prices here in Washington and it's something that we were very, very concerned about and hope that there can be some further negotiations to make sure that wheat and agriculture are not negatively impacted by those potential tariffs.”

She said that free trade between the U.S., Canada and Mexico has made the countries interdependent on each other.  Chumrau added she’s happy the tariffs were delayed, and she’s hopeful some kind of long-term solution can be reached sooner rather than later.

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